Drug-fueled organized crime in Ecuador, reaches new levels

Organized drug gangs are threatening to consume Ecuador in some of the worst violence seen in years. How did it get this bad and what are the governments options?

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

In Ecuador, thousands of gang members have been arrested since the government declared a war against criminal groups over three weeks ago. All this follows a violent uptick in gang-related activity that culminated in gunmen taking staff hostage during a live TV show. Reporter Jorge Valencia explains drug-fueled organized crime has reached unprecedented levels in Ecuador.

JORGE VALENCIA, BYLINE: Ecuador is officially in armed combat with gangs. In a video released by the military, soldiers with rifles barge into a prison…

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Singing in non-English language).

VALENCIA: …And order inmates to line up in their underwear and sing the national anthem.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Singing in non-English language).

VALENCIA: Ecuador was once a haven safe from the violence of its neighboring countries. That started to change some 20 years ago. Authorities in neighboring Colombia, with help from American taxpayers, made it a lot harder for drug traffickers to send cocaine straight to the United States, says Hugo Acero, former security secretary in the Colombian capital of Bogota.

HUGO ACERO: (Non-English language spoken).

VALENCIA: Which forced drug traffickers to look elsewhere.

ACERO: (Non-English language spoken).

VALENCIA: So Colombian and Peruvian drug mafias sent a lot of their drugs where? Ecuador, Acero says. Often, they’re hidden inside banana shipping containers sent through the Panama Canal to Europe. Mario Pazmino is former intelligence director with the Ecuadorian Army. He says that in the last decade, there was another major change.

MARIO PAZMINO: (Non-English language spoken).

VALENCIA: “That’s when Ecuador became a country where cocaine is processed from leaf…